Black Women in Films

In the essay, “Black Women and Literacy in Feature Films”, Joanne Kilgour Dowdy talks about how the media portrays African American women in movies and books.
When black women have leading roles in films, it is usually a role where they are struggling; most films involving black actors are never positive. Movies such as, “The color purple” and “Precious” are prime examples of this. In these movies, the actresses are playing roles where they are struggling and trying to overcome their struggles. In “The Color Purple” Ceile, the main character, is being emotionally and physically beat down by a man. She is psychologically confused about her role in society because of it, and throughout the movie she is slowly realizing who she truly is and how she should be treated. So she tries to fix her situation. In “Precious”, where the title is named after the main character, she is living in a home where she is abused and treated like a slave by her own mother. However, at the end of the movie, she escapes the situation. In both movies, the women triumph at the end from their struggles in the beginning. Movies like these not only show that black women struggle, but it shows how strong they are through their triumphs. So it’s kind of a bittersweet depiction of African American women in society.

People who are of a different race and are closed minded who watch these films, will think that all black women go through troubles like these. That is definitely not the case, because I don’t know many who have gone through horrific events in their lives. Life is not always happy and easy going so it isn’t unreal for writers to write movies like this, but I think that there should be more movies written about black women in a positive way, so outsiders can see both sides. The media plays a major role in altering peoples perceptions on things.

“Voices of our Foremothers"

“Voices of our Foremothers” is about an African American woman who was adopted at a young age by a Euro-American couple. Growing up she was lost in who she was and where she fit in, until she found her place in college. She was inspired by four of her African American women professors to become a teacher in the field of African American studies.

In this text, Birney talks about how her teachers cared for her not only academically, but emotionally as well. She goes on to talk about a study that I found interesting, in which it showed that Black teachers are more caring, “Jacqueline Jordan Irvine found that the African American teachers in her study understood the power of caring.” (Birney 50). I believe that the reason African Americans are more caring is because of all the hardships we have gone through, throughout history. We were once in slaved and had to fight for equal rights against people who treated us like property. Black people weren’t brought up in a society that really cared about them. During the Civil Rights Movements, in which African Americans fought to gain equality, many terrible things happened, such ass the assassination of Dr. King, the imprisonment of Rosa Parks for sitting in the “white” section of the bus, and the beatings of many for unjust reasons. Although African Americans have gained equal rights in today’s society, we are still facing hardships. Many African Americans are in prison and in poverty, and are being murdered due to “black on black” crime.

Black people know what its like to need someone there to cheer them on and pick them up in a time of downfall, so they can relate to struggling students or even students who aren’t struggling who need encouragement. School is very challenging and students need teachers who are sensitive to their academic needs along with their emotional needs, because learning consists of both.

Pimps Whores and Welfare Brats

Many African Americans feel that when caught up in drama, they can use the race card. “It’s because I’m black, huh?”, many times when black people get accused of doing things they tend to think their race has something to do with it. I can agree with this a little bit; sometimes race does matter when things goes wrong. Stereotypes are the reason for this.

I remember in the twelfth grade I took a discussion-based class called, multicultural literature. One of the topics we talked about was racial profiling and the police. We had a police officer come in and talk to us about this matter, but before we got the facts, we discussed it amongst ourselves. We thought about a scenario in which a cop pulls over a black guy riding around in a flashy car. The stereotype about black people is that we are poor and have a high crime rate. So knowing this, the cop will pull the guy over, for no reason, and question where he got the car from and search it for illegal substances. Many people had their own interpretations on this subject, but when we talked to the cop, he cleared it all up. He told us that they are taught the different stereotypes about all races and are taught to racial profile in order to find suspects of a crime. When they are looking for a suspect they are doing it off of a description, so you cant blame them when it is in cases such as that. So when black people try to pull the race card when they are being accused, it’s because of the stereotypes.